The Top Forty-five Films of 2023, and supplementary notes

John Ralston and Mia Goth in the number four film.

I thought that this year I would not half-ass it and just throw up a whole bunch of films but rather do a PROPERLY RANKED list, only long, because I wanna laud a lot of movies. I don't know if this was a great idea, only because I'm not sure how truly and well I executed it.  I mean, when it's forty-five films how important is the ranking anyway, or maybe I should say how potently does it signify? I mean, as far as I'm concerned the top seven are each in their own way equally great. And as it happens, the ranking of Poor Things plummeted after I saw it a second time but it still made the cut, in paart because it's forty-five films. The year began pretty much abysmally but it did pick up, so let's just get on with it, 

1) Killers of the Flower Moon (Scorsese)

In addition to my Ebert.com best-of-year capsule, I wrote about DiCaprio in the movie here. 

2) Asteroid City (Anderson)

3) Fallen Leaves (Kaurismäki)

4) Infinity Pool (Cronenberg)

A critic friend after the screening: "That was a very wet movie." 

5) Oppenheimer (Nolan)

6) The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki)

Well don't you know/about the bird

7) Tori and Lokita (Dardennes)

I did not review, but Manohla Dargis did, and she speaks for me here. 

8) The Killer (Fincher)

My Venice notice is, on reflection, a trifle inadequate. In conversation a friend called it the "best film about the American business ethos" in recent memory, and that's apt. And as my wife observed about Fassbender's appearance about three-quarters of the way in, "So much for being inconspicuous." It's a film that truly understands the concept of the unreliable narrator. It's kind of scary that so many film critics do not. 

9) Priscilla (Coppola)

10) The Holdovers (Payne)

Ostensibly a comedy, but what won me over here was a consistent, near-blanketing melancholy.

11) The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and three other Roald Dahl Films (Anderson)

12) Perfect Days (Wenders)

It's true that Wenders takes a pretty scrubbed and sanitized approach to toilet-cleaning. But given Kings of the Road, I don't think he owes us anything in the shit department. (N.b.: after I posted this it occured to me that some might misinterpret this comment, especially if they haven't seen Kings. Which is a great movie and if you've seen it you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't seen it, do watch! It's fll of surprises!) But beyond what he does not show, there are a few critics I've seen who can't abide the concommitant attitude. Which I took to be "acceptance is the key." For some the distinction between acceptance and complacency is non-existent, and I get that. Nevertheless, I was rather moved by this picture and the serenity sought and often found by its protagonist. It's not without its darkness, but it instructs us to find it in the margins of the diegesis, as when the niece speaks of her admiration of the central character of Patricia Highsmith's story "The Terrapin." Look it up! And also remember that Wenders adapted Highsmith almost a lifetime ago. The movie reminded me of what Bogdanovich said of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: that it "is not a young man’s movie; it has the wisdom and poetic perceptions of an artist knowingly nearing the end of his life and career." One may counter that Valance reaches far dourer conclusions than this picture does, but there's more mixed in with those conclusions, to wit: "I sort of have a hankering to come back here to live; maybe open up a law office." "Rance...if you knew how often I dreamed of it. My roots are here. I guess my heart is here. Yes, let's come back."

13) Pacifiction (Serra)

Oh that Albert!

14) Passages (Sacks)

15) Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Soderbergh)

I have no business putting this on a best-of list, as I was pretty close to its production (it gave me the pretext to visit London for the first time!), but I have to stand up for my friend Steven Soderbergh's fascinating attempt to at least partially Losey-ize a "let's put on a show" musical. Owen Gleiberman complained, when naming this one of his five worst films of the year (yeah, he's no longer on this household's Christmas-card list) (okay we don't have one anyway), that he didn't recognize the Mike Lane of this movie relative to the Mike Lane of the prior two. I commend his investment in the character of Mike Lane, I guess, but for me the film is delightful because it's more or less as if Mike Lane went to Hollywood and got cast in the Gene Kelly role in this musical of the sort they don't make anymore and maybe never made in the first place. 

16) Poor Things (Lanthimos)

"I must go punch that baby." 

17) Barbie (Gerwig)

It's a real film, all right. And Gerwig is to be commended for a number of things, including fitting a shitload of conceits coherently under one umbrella. One the oter hand, while I'm sure it wasn't easy for Agnes Varda to get One Sings, The Other Doesn't made, at least she didn't have to shake hands with an IP to do it. 

18) Beau Is Afraid (Aster)

Whoa!

19) Master Gardener (Schrader)

20) Afire (Petzold) 

21) The Zone of Interest (Glazer)

Not perfect, but within its purview — which is phenomenological rather than philosophical/epistemological — largely impressive and unsettling. 

22) John Wick Chapter 4 (Stahelski)

Spoiler alert: the dog lives in this one. 

23) La Civil (Mihai)

24) It Ain’t Over (Mullin)

25) Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd (Bogowa and Thorgeson)

26) Spider-Man: Across The SpiderVerse (Dos Santos, Powers, and Thompson)

The new best Spider-Man movie.

27) Ferrari (Mann)

28) A Thousand and One (Rockwell) 

Probably the most formally conventional movie in this grouping, but a vital story, well-told, brilliantly detailed. 

29) Anselm (Wenders)

30) The Sweet East (Williams)

My friend and occasional audio commentary partner Nick Pinkerton wrote the script, and he's a fan of Amos Vogel and his motto "be sand, not oil." So I don't get quite why he objects to Richard Brody's subjective summation of what makes this movie abrasive, except maybe it's that he's now in the position of a filmmaker involved in getting his movie marketed more than he is of a critic-turned-screenwriter. In any event, this movie actually irritated me no end on initial viewing. But once I settled down I remembered that it wanted to irritate me, and then appreciated that it irritated me in some potentially intellectually constructive ways. And it's never boring. (And I'm eager to read what I hope is a forthcoming review from a major critic who absolutely flipped for it at NYFF.) At one point Talia Rider's character is instructed that smoking is a filthy habit, and her response is Pure Pinkerton, and I appreciate that. 

31) Napoleon (Scott)

Well, I was entertained. 

32) Thanksgiving (Roth)

I am sorry I didn't have the stones to give this a Critics Pick designation, I really ought to have. 

33) Silent Night (Woo)

34) May/December (Haynes) 

Not camp. Not melodrama. Haynes. 

35) Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki)

Not once is the phrase "It's Godzilla" uttered. 

36) Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 (McQuarrie)

Tom Cruise isn't Buster Keaton but he'll do. 

37) Raid on the Lethal Zone (Xiao Pang)

Car chases in avalanche and flood zones. Unique! 

38) A Haunting in Venice (Branagh)

Sir Kenneth gets his Bava on. 

39) Streetwise (Jiazuo Na)

40) Showing Up (Reichardt)

Johnny Boy: "I met them in the Village."

Tony: "Bohemians." — Mean Streets (Scorsese, 1973)

41) Anatomy of a Fall (Triet)

Not a patch on Anatomy of a Murder but it's got some juice. The whip-pans and zooms are a dumb distraction. The political dimensions of its characterizations are actually non-existent. 

42) The Iron Claw (Durkin)

I don't trust Sean Durkin or any of his friends, so I was expecting this to be some kind of "check out these rubes" fest. Having maintained such distance from Durkin as I preferred, I therefore (my bad) had no idea he was a wrestling head, and his enthusiasm both enhances and compromises what he does here. But it's a better-than-decent picture, often wrenching, and the acting is consistently superb.

43) Mister Organ (Farrier)

44) Joyland (Saim Sadiq)

45) Return to Dust (Ruijun Li)

Potential contenders not seen due to time constraints

Wiseman, McQueen

Restorations

Deep Crimson (Arturo Ripstein, 1996)

Maybe the grimmest picture I've ever seen. Aiiiiieeee.

The World’s Greatest Sinner (Timoth Carey, 1962)

Magnificent eccentricity. 

Well-liked at NYFF and the Venice Biennale, and unreleased in the U.S. as yet

Kidnapped  (Bellochi0)

Martin Scorsese, take heart; this guy's a couple years your senior and still kicking out the jams. 

Evil Does Not Exist (Hamaguchi)

A bit more enigmatic than I might have liked

Coup de Chance (Allen)

It's good!

Hollywoodgate (Ibrahim Nash'at)

Yikes!

Hesitation Wound (Selman Nacar)

An engaging novella-like Turkish picture. 

Aggro Dr1ft (Korine)

Both fun to watch and fun to watch the walkouts. When they tell you something is shot in infrared, believe them. 

 The Beast (Bonello)

It's coming around and it's not entirely what you expect. 

Comments

[Oliver]

I saw 'Oppenheimer' twice in IMAX, both screenings completely sold out, then went on to catch the very last showing of 'The Boy and the Heron' in Hiroshima (yes, really!) at the end of its 100-day run. Two experiences as memorable as the films themselves.

[Titch]

You didn't see Past Lives? 2023 wasn't a vintage year, taking into account only a fraction of the films on your list have had theatrical showings, over the pond. The best films I saw in the cinema in 2023 were last year's crop - we lag behind. Tár, Banshees Of Inishirin, The Fabelmans, EO, All The Beauty and the Bloodshed, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, Saint Omer. Oppenheimer was a Big Event and so was Napoleon - I don't feel the urge to see them again soon. The Boy and The Heron was the first Miyazaki film that didn't move me. Asteroid City lacked Bill Murray, Killers Of The Flower Moon could have used someone else than DiCaprio - but then Scorsese wouldn't have got the funding he wanted. And it dragged. Fallen Leaves will premiere here on Christmas Day. That will be my number one.

[Glenn Kenny]

I did see "Past Lives," and thought it was entirely respectable, and particularly enjoyed its use of a John Cale deep cut on the soundtrack. That said, it didn't really resonate all that strongly with me, in part because I've never been much of a "what might have been" guy. Not even as a drunk! And in the 14 years I've been sober any such inclinations have been squelched further. What happened happened, what's now is now, and I never think "what if?" At least in part because I'm in such a great place right now that I only need to appreciate that even the most wretched and painful parts of my past were crucial to getting me here.

[George]

I only saw seven new movies in theaters this year -- the fewest for me in 50 years -- but four of them are on your list: Oppenheimer, Asteroid City, Priscilla and Infinity Pool. The others were Evil Dead Rise, No Hard Feelings and Bottoms. Rachel Sennott rules!

I'm not going to see movies as long as Killers of the Flower Moon in theaters until intermissions come back. I think Titanic (1997) was the last movie I saw that had an intermission. Why did they go away?

[Andrew Del Monte]

I recommend checking out Zhang Yimou's "Full River Red" if you haven't. It's one of his strangest films, even darker than "Shadow," and I wonder if it's possible he's discreetly serving up some subversion alongside the film's more ostensible propagandistic message. Said wondering could be motivated by my ignorance of Chinese politics & current Chinese cinema, but if anyone is interested in reading a long-winded blog arguing this take on the film, find it here: https://www.weirdgeometry.com/blog/fullriverred

[George]

Just saw The Iron Claw and thought it was very, very good. If you can take the nonstop tragedy of the movie's second half (based on fact), worth seeing. The movie is very well made and every part is beautifully acted.

It struck me as the sort of movie John Ford or John Huston might have made, many decades ago. How did this get made in today's IP-saturated era for American movies?

[Titch]

Just saw Fallen Leaves. Like The Boy and The Heron, there is a lot of familiarity with previous films. But I'm going to say that this could possibly be Kaurismäki's greatest film. Who could have thought that "Early Morning Rain" on the soundtrack, in Finnish, could be so moving? That sequence, leading up to the pair meeting up again, outside the cinema, is one of the greatest I've seen in all movies.

[Fred]

Please keep the blog going. I just got into your blog and I love it!